Standard Directory Variables

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2.2.3 Standard Directory Variables

The GNU Coding Standards also specify a hierarchy of variables to denote installation directories. Some of these are:

Directory variable Default value
prefix /usr/local
  exec_prefix ${prefix}
    bindir ${exec_prefix}/bin
    libdir ${exec_prefix}/lib
    ...
  includedir ${prefix}/include
  datarootdir ${prefix}/share
    datadir ${datarootdir}
    mandir ${datarootdir}/man
    infodir ${datarootdir}/info
    docdir ${datarootdir}/doc/${PACKAGE}
  ...

Directory variable	Default value
`prefix`	`/usr/local`
`exec_prefix`	`${prefix}`
`bindir`	`${exec_prefix}/bin`
`libdir`	`${exec_prefix}/lib`
...
`includedir`	`${prefix}/include`
`datarootdir`	`${prefix}/share`
`datadir`	`${datarootdir}`
`mandir`	`${datarootdir}/man`
`infodir`	`${datarootdir}/info`
`docdir`	`${datarootdir}/doc/${PACKAGE}`
...

Each of these directories has a role which is often obvious from its name. In a package, any installable file will be installed in one of these directories. For instance in amhello-1.0, the program hello is to be installed in bindir, the directory for binaries. The default value for this directory is /usr/local/bin, but the user can supply a different value when calling configure. Also the file README will be installed into docdir, which defaults to /usr/local/share/doc/amhello.

A user who wishes to install a package on his own account could proceed as follows:

     ~/amhello-1.0 % ./configure --prefix ~/usr
     ...
     ~/amhello-1.0 % make
     ...
     ~/amhello-1.0 % make install
     ...

This would install ~/usr/bin/hello and ~/usr/share/doc/amhello/README.

The list of all such directory options is shown by ./configure --help.